James Comey reportedly is being investigated for possibly lying to Congress during testimony in 2020 about whether he authorized a leak of information.
Five years seems to be plenty of time to fact-check someone’s testimony. Anything longer than that, and most people simply won’t recall their own words well enough to hold them accountable for them anymore.
I mean, that’s literally a change some states made in response to the Weinstein scandal. If it’s reasonable to assume the truth isn’t going to come out before the statute runs out, I’m definitely in favour of making it longer. It should probably still exist, but 5 years seems very short for serious crimes, especially considering how slow the justice system works.
The problem is that the DOJ isn’t as independent as people would like it to be, so you basically need a change in administration to hold someone to account, which could take longer than 5 years.
You can still run investigations in the meantime, though. Republicans are notorious for that. Even when they have no real power to do anything about it, they will investigate all the craziest shit that they can imagine…just to make it look like they’re doing something. Then when they have more control again, they have the option to pull the trigger or not.
Democrats should definitely take something from that playbook, but there’s been many cases of someone lying in front of Congress and not facing consequences. It happened in the leadup of both Iraq wars, and I don’t think people should just be allowed to get away with stuff like that just because the clock ran out.
Obviously part of the problem is that Democrats don’t seem to be interested in prosecuting stuff like that in the name of bipartisanship, but that’s how they got where they got now.
The biggest problem with all this stuff, is trying to prove that the person in question actually “lied” versus “I genuinely believed what I said at the time” versus “Oops, I was obviously mistaken”.
It’s impossible to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind, so unless you have some kind of date-stamped confession, that clearly contradicts their testimony…you’re never going to get a conviction.
I know these particular charges are probably bullshit, but I don’t think there should be a statute of limitations for lying to Congress.
Five years seems to be plenty of time to fact-check someone’s testimony. Anything longer than that, and most people simply won’t recall their own words well enough to hold them accountable for them anymore.
Congress has cameras. If you’re lying to Congress about factual things, your memory of the event shouldn’t matter.
By that logic, there shouldn’t be a statute of limitations beyond 5 years on rape. Is that what you’re saying? (I’m being very over inflammatory)
I mean, that’s literally a change some states made in response to the Weinstein scandal. If it’s reasonable to assume the truth isn’t going to come out before the statute runs out, I’m definitely in favour of making it longer. It should probably still exist, but 5 years seems very short for serious crimes, especially considering how slow the justice system works.
The problem is that the DOJ isn’t as independent as people would like it to be, so you basically need a change in administration to hold someone to account, which could take longer than 5 years.
You can still run investigations in the meantime, though. Republicans are notorious for that. Even when they have no real power to do anything about it, they will investigate all the craziest shit that they can imagine…just to make it look like they’re doing something. Then when they have more control again, they have the option to pull the trigger or not.
Democrats should definitely take something from that playbook, but there’s been many cases of someone lying in front of Congress and not facing consequences. It happened in the leadup of both Iraq wars, and I don’t think people should just be allowed to get away with stuff like that just because the clock ran out.
Obviously part of the problem is that Democrats don’t seem to be interested in prosecuting stuff like that in the name of bipartisanship, but that’s how they got where they got now.
The biggest problem with all this stuff, is trying to prove that the person in question actually “lied” versus “I genuinely believed what I said at the time” versus “Oops, I was obviously mistaken”.
It’s impossible to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind, so unless you have some kind of date-stamped confession, that clearly contradicts their testimony…you’re never going to get a conviction.
They’re bullshit enough that the previous AG refused to prosecute and got fired for it.